I have around 127,000 Voyager miles that are expiring at the end of March. I'm based in Seattle. A while back, I was thinking of booking a *A partner award to Europe in J for around 110,000 miles round trip (one ways not possible?) but it looks like SAA devalued the *A chart massively, now requiring over 177k miles RT.

From poking around, it appears the non-Star awards on partner airlines like Virgin Atlantic or Emirates seem like the best deal in J. However, it seems as though you have to originate in London or Dubai, respectively. Several questions: 1) Is that true? or can I originate in the US? 2) do the charts show one-way or round-trip mileage? 3) If I fly Virgin Atlantic, the notes say that only Vegas, LAX, and SFO are valid West Coast US cities. Seattle is a relatively new destination for VS, do you think Seattle is a valid city?

Finally, and perhaps more importantly, would you have any recommendations on how to best burn this stash of miles??